Google has announced its much-awaited new phone, the Galaxy Nexus, and also released a new version of its Android phone software. Codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0 will be available to existing Android users soon and is available to software developers now. The Galaxy Nexus will launch in November.

Among the Galaxy Nexus’s new feature are face recognition, allowing users to unlock their phones simply by looking at the phone’s front camera, a redesigned interface, an improved keyboard and a new application using Near-Field Communications (NFC) that lets two Android handsets share content directly.

The phone also replaces all physical buttons with software-based, moveable equivalents. The change allows a larger, 4.65” screen, which like the previous Nexus S model is slightly curved.

Running a 1.2Ghz processor, the Galaxy Nexus will be made by Samsung and also offers a high-definition display. It had been rumoured that it would be called the Nexus Prime, but instead the Korean manufacturer and Google have explicitly linked the device to Samsung's best-selling Galaxy range.

Writing on the Google Blog, the company’s Senior Vice President of Mobile, Andy Rubin, wrote that “Ice Cream Sandwich makes Android simple and beautiful, and takes the smartphone to beyond smart”.

Ice Cream Sandwich is the first version of Android to run on both tablets and phones, and Google has even created a new, optimised font for the purpose. Google claims that widgets have been improved dramatically, and also said that it would provide the “best mobile Gmail experience to date”, including some offline search options.

Web bookmarks now synchronise with Google Chrome, and zooming out of the calendar now allows users to move to different views, going from daily to monthly, for instance.

Although many phones, such as the newly announced Motorola Razr and the Samsung Galaxy SII offer 8 megapixel cameras, the Galaxy Nexus uses a 5mp version.

Rubin said that more than half a million Android devices are now being activated every day.

Announced in Hong Kong at an event originally planned for San Diego but postponed after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, reactions to the new Galaxy Nexus were broadly positive. Writing on technology blog This is My Next, Vlad Savov said that the interface, set-up and synchronising were all improved. He added, however, that on the pre-production models shown in Hong Kong “Android isn’t as swift and responsive as iOS or Windows Phone”.